


this storm, too, shall pass

by masongrey



Series: pearlet one-shots [7]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, Hospitalization, M/M, Travel, semi cracky au, strange, tw for abusive relationship, tw for physical abuse, vanishing!matt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:05:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4602648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masongrey/pseuds/masongrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So,” Jason says with a low laugh. “Are you an angel or a demon?”</p><p>Matt shrugs. “Both. Neither. Does it matter to you?”<br/>- - -<br/>Where Jason keeps running, Matt keeps jumping up out of nowhere and Jason keeps going insane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this storm, too, shall pass

**Author's Note:**

> I was on an airplane today, and this sort of just happened. Enjoy <333

Jason tries smiling at his reflection.

He decides they don't look too bad from this angle, the bruises.

He runs a gentle hand over them, smoothing out his furrowed brow as he practices his explaination. “I fell,” he smiles shakily. “Just an accident.”

“Jason, you ready?” Mark's voice is loud and sudden and it shakes Jason up and away from his quiet observation.

“Give me a minute!” His own voice squeaks up at the corners and he grabs a scarf, wrapping it carefully around his neck.

There's a creak at the door and Jason jumps up and spins around, clutching his hands together and wringing them anxiously.

“Jesus, Jason,” Mark smiles, leaning his hip against the doorframe. “You'd think I was the boogeyman or some shit, the way you jump around here.”

“Yeah,” Jason laughs quietly, pressing his fingers against the pulse hammering madly in his wrists. “The boogeyman.”

\- - -

Jason's birthday dinner is strained.

Jason's excited to see Kurtis, he really is. His friend is warm and bright and cosmically connected and he's just over there, he's so _close_ for the first time in so long. Still, Mark feels like a wall between them, seperating them with a dark glare and a silent threat. Jason eats quietly.

Kurtis notices it, Jason can tell. Kurtis notices the hint of danger in Jason's eyes, the unspoken promise in Mark's, the hum of things unsaid, the way Jason jerks away from Mark's loud and grubby advances, the way Mark's eyes darken with the thrill of the chase whenever Jason tugs himself away and stares down at his plate.

Kurtis finally drags Jason into the bathroom and yanks his scarf off with a gasp and a muttered “Shit, Jason.”

Jason breaks, sliding down the wall and landing on the floor with a soft sob.

“Don't say anything,” he moans into his hands. “For the love of god, Kurtis, don't say anything to him.”

Kurtis just swallows his own sobs and hands the scarf back to Jason without a word.

\- - -

Two days later, there's a knock on the door of the apartment.

Mark is at work, so Jason pads to the door like a ghost in stockinged feet.

It's Kurtis, looking warm and bright and cosmically connected as ever.

“Let me see,” he whispers, grabbing hold of Jason's shoulder with his wiry palm. “Let me see.”

Jason gulps, slowly edging his shirt off. Tears pool in Kurtis' warm brown eyes when he sees what lies underneath.

Jason shrugs ruefully. “It's not so bad,” he whispers.

“Jason, babe.” Kurtis presses a soft kiss to his forehead. “It's bad honey. It's bad.”

“I know,” Jason crumples into Kurtis, choking gasping sobs into his warm shoulder. “I know.”

\- - -

“Here,” Kurtis whispers when he leaves, pressing a brown folder into Jason's hand. “Happy birthday darling.”

He waves goodbye with a sad smile.

The folder holds a ticket. A plane ticket to Amsterdam. A plane ticket and little envelope of dutch money and a hotel reservation slip for a three week stay in an Amsterdam hotel.

It's dated exactly a week from today. Jason grabs it fast and holds it close to his heart.

He is terrified of this, he's terrified of leaving. But he wants to, oh, how he wants to.

But he can't. He knows as much. Mark would never allow it. He slips the ticket back into the envelope, buries it inside a dusty old volume of Joy of Cooking and tries to stop thinking about it.

\- - -

Mark comes home drunk again, he's angry, swinging.

Jason hides in the bathroom with all the lights off and a chair pulled in front of the door but Mark finds him anyways.

Later Jason wipes away the blood trickling from his nose and tries to smile at his reflection.

He can't. It's a ghost, a ghost of a man that is looking back at him. He looks dead inside, he feels dead inside.

It's in this moment that he knows that there is nothing, and he means nothing, that will stop him from making that flight to Amsterdam.

\- - -

He calls Kurtis, tells him that he'll go on the trip. He won't be telling Mark that he's leaving, but Kurtis doesn't need to know that.

\- - -

He packs his bag and jams a knife into the screen of Mark's computer so many times that it starts to smoke a little.

It feels good, but not nearly good enough.

Kurtis delivers him to the airport with a hug and a warm smile.

“You'll love it,” he smiles, pressing his lips into Jason's forehead. “It'll be good for you, yeah? To get away, to just be Jason again.” _To not be afraid anymore_ , is what he doesn't need to say.

“Yeah,” Jason grins. He's dizzy already with the power of leaving.

The scarf covering his bruises hangs heavily around his neck. In a week, he knows, he won't need to use it.

And suddenly, it's not so heavy anymore.

\- - -

Amsterdam shimmerrs with something that's not at all easy to describe. It feels like freedom and it tastes like a strawberry milkshake, sweet and tangy and heavy on Jason's tongue.

He checks into his hotel with a smile and a spring in his step. The plane ride had been easier than he'd imagined. He'd panicked for a minute, desperately tried to call Mark and apologize, but a friendly stewardess with kind eyes had helped him through it.

He's always been dreadfully scared of planes, but after his panic episode he had just tipped his head back and fallen asleep. He'd slept for seven of the twelve hours in the flight, and had been strangely calm for the other five.

He buys lunch for himself at a little cafe and walks across the street, ending up on a bench in the park across the square from his hotel.

Kurtis was right, this is exactly what he needs. Space. Distance. Time, to breathe and live and let go.

There's a stranger on the bench opposite Jason. A stranger with tattoos and a septum peircing and a devilish smile.

The stranger turns his smile directly at Jason in full force, and it's like actual sunshine is bounching off of his teeth and shooting Jason in the eyes. The stranger's got long legs, tight black skinny jeans and a pair of tattered combat boots. He's sprawled all over the bench, a thin blunt speared between his fingers.

It's Amsterdam, Jason reminds himself when he does an immediate double take. Everything's legal in Amsterdam.

“You have nice eyes,” the stranger bares his teeth in another brilliant smile.

Jason gulps, tucking his feet underneath him on the bench. This boy is American, tan and brown-haired and rough around the edges and beautiful, so, so beautiful.

“Oh really?” Jason chokes. “How so?” The stranger tips his head back a little at that rusty attempt at flirting. It's been a while, Jason reminds himself, trying to shake the awkwardness off.

“They look like they've seen the world.”

“Not the world,” Jason mutters. “Just some shit.”

The stranger nods, going in for another drag on the blunt he's holding. “I get that,” the rasping lilt to his voice makes Jason shiver.

“Jason.” Jason wiggles his fingers dorkily as he says it.

“Matt.” Matt copies the motion.

Jason bites his lip, tucking some hair behind his ear as Matt's eyes make a long, slow once-over.

“You're pretty,” Matt states simply, stabbing the burning end of the blunt out on the bottom of his boot.

“You're beautiful,” Jason whispers, flicking his eyes up to meet Matt's hazy ones.

“Guess we have something in common then,” Matt grins, the corner of his mouth twitching up.

“Where are you staying?” Jason winces as soon as it leaves his mouth, abrupt and the farthest thing possible from subtle and sly. Matt just smiles again, long and drawn out and beautiful.

“Anywhere, everywhere, nowhere.”

“I'm in the hotel right over there. Room 124.” Holy shit, it's been way, way too long.

“That so?” Matt's darken with the sort of purpose that makes Jason shiver.

“Yeah.”

“Interesting.”

\- - -

“You know,” Matt gasps into the slick skin of Jason's chest as they scramble, panting onto the bed. “You're not exactly my type.”

“Same,” Jason moans, throwing his head back.

“I don't usually do this sort of thing,” Matt says as he fumbles with the lube.

“What?” Jason pants. “Sleep with strangers you met in the park?”

Matt laughs, pressing his smile into the crevase of Jason's neck. “You could say that.”

“Could've fooled me.”

And then Matt's fingers are pressing, stroking, reaching and Jason is throwing his head back and surrendering to this strange boy with the twinkling eyes and the cloud of swirling smoke.

\- - -

“I might stick around for a while,” Matt remarks as he smokes afterwards, a cigarette this time.

“I might not mind that,” Jason mumbles happily from where his head is pressed into Matt's shoulder. “I might not mind that at all.”

\- - -

The next two weeks are a blur of sloppy kisses, languid sex and strolling happily through the city, arm in arm.

Matt's skin, his smile, his teeth, his slow and drawling laugh, are like drugs, shooting deep into Jason's veins, crawling endlessly beneath his skin, shivering through his thoughts and dragging unelegantly through his every waking breath.

Jason doesn't miss the way Matt's eyes trail carefully over the still-healing bruises. Jason also doesn't miss the way Matt presses a few extra, gentle kisses into the yellowing skin. Jason doesn't miss the way they dissapear when Matt touches them.

Jason thinks he might just be falling in love.

\- - -

They go to a pub, come back tripping and singing and laughing and drunk. They kiss and pant and fall asleep half-naked.

Jason wakes up alone.

Matt's backpack is gone from its place by the door. The lube and condoms from the bedside table drawer are gone too. The stupid poem Matt had written on a napkin at the pub and jammed into Jason's front pocket is nowhere to be found. The flowers--peonies--they had snagged from a flowerbox and woven into each other's hair, yesterday drying on the windowsill, today missing.

There's not a trace of Matt anywhere.

Jason's beginning to think that Matt never even existed in the first place.

Jason is supposed to go home in a week.

Back to reality. Back to Mark.

Jason runs to a payphone and dials Kurtis.

“In a week,” he says. “I am going to France.”

He buys a plane ticket with money he wasn't sure he had, and off he goes to the airport.

\- - -

On the plane, in the seat next to him, is Matt.

He drops his suitcase and it falls to the floor with a clatter when he sees the tattoos, the ring, the ragged army boots.

“Hi.” Matt looks tired, washed up, sallow. He grabs Jason's suitcase and swings it up and into an overhead bin.

“Where did you go?” Jason chokes a little, slamming down into his seat.

“Anywhere, everywhere, nowhere.” Matt shrugs, fiddling with his tray table. “I missed you.”

“Me too.” Jason admits, tugging nervously on a strand of hair. Matt smiles his crooked smile. Jason shifts in his seat.

“I don't usually do this sort of thing, you know.” Matt whispers, breath hot against Jason's ear.

“What? Have long winded affairs with strangers you meet in parks?” Jason turns his head and whispers back, his lips barely brushing Matt's.

“No,” Matt smiles sadly, staring out the tiny round window. “I don't usually come back.”

\- - -

The flight is rough, turbulent. The plane is flying directly into a thick, dark stormcloud.

Jason grips Matt's hand and grips it tightly. He's always hated flying. Flying is a war against gravity, sometimes you win, sometimes you don't.

Matt holds him steady, his hand is warm and strong, stable and real.

Jason drifts off to sleep once the storm has passed.

When he wakes up, Matt has vanished. His backpack is gone, though his smell still lingers, a strange, ashy, smokey smell.

The seat next to Jason is occupied by a dozing woman and the flight attendant swears, with a strange look on her face, that the sleeping woman has always been next to Jason, and of course she doesn't know anything about a boy with a nose-ring and a glinting smile.

Jason rubs his temples and blinks his eyes shut and swears to God that if he sees Matt one more time, he'll go back home and check himself into a psychiatric care facility immediately.

\- - -

Paris is beautiful. Jason lives and breathes it until one day a fellow traveller with a beard half as long as his arm leans over and whispers, “Try Prauge, it's beautiful this time of year.”

“I,” Jason smiles into the payphone that reaches Kurtis every time. “Am going to Prauge.”

“Good,” Kurtis smiles. “Good.”

\- - -

Prauge is beautiful. It swirls and stretches and is so ornate and carved and overdone, that the largest and most beautiful of the french baroque chateaus seems understated, modest in comparison.

Jason finds money everywhere, under bricks, fluttering in the wind, hiding under his pillow, tucked into his pocket in the shape of little origami flowers. He's definitely insane, but he's not complaining.

He eats schnitzel and gnocchi and roasted duck and calzones (which are strangely good here) and watches the clocktower chime and romps around the city trying to find something that he's not even sure he had in the first place.

Prauge is beautiful, but the wind is sharp, the rain is lonely.

Jason is tired of running.

He calls Kurtis.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “I am coming home.”

Kurtis is quiet. “Should I tell Mark?”

Jason thinks and then he whispers, “No. I'll tell him myself.”

\- - -

The flight is terrifying. The walls are closing in, the wings are burning, the whole damned thing is crashing from the sky and is going to burst into a fiery inferno when it hits the ground, which will be any second now.

Jason is dying, suffocating, drowning, burning and freezing to death all at once.

\- - -

In New York, he hails a taxi. The driver steps out with a wink. It's Matt. Jason steadies himelf against his suitcase, sucking air deeply inside his lungs.

“Hiya,” Matt waves.

“ _You_ ,” Jason stammers, rushing forward and pressing Matt's cheeks with his hands. “You are not real. You can't be.”

Matt shrugs, holding open the passenger door for Jason.

Jason clambers in, face slack and without emotion.

“Where do you want to go?” Matt's voice is small and the cigarette sitting in his hand is slowly dissolving into ash and flame. “Paris? Milan? Rome? I can make it happen.”

“I knew it,” Jason moans. “I'm crazy. I'm fucking insane,”

“You aren't crazy, you're perfect.” Matt whispers. “Where do you want to go?”

“Home. Take me home.”

\- - -

Mark rages.

\--YOU'VE BEEN GONE FOR-FUCKING-EVER HOW DARE YOU YOU SELFISH FUCKING BASTARD--

Jason cowers, a pure reflex.

Inside all he can think of are the glittering lights of Paris, the magestic architecture of Prague, the strange magic of Amsterdam, the secrets hiding in Matt's eyes.

Mark shoves him, tells him to LISTEN.

Jason trips, falls, lands wrong.

Something snaps. Someone screams.

Everything goes black.

\- - -

Jason wakes up in the hospital, a cast on his arm and a sharp, immeasurably painful ache in his side.

Kurtis is holding his good hand, he's in tears.

“Honey,” he cries, rocking back and forth in his chair. “Jason baby. Oh, honey. Oh, baby. I'm so, so sorry. This won't ever, ever, happen again, okay baby? I swear. I've got you honey. Oh, god, I've got you.”

Jason just stares out the tiny window on the door of his hospital room and into the hallway beyond

Leaning against the back wall, holding a bouquet of peonies, is Matt.

Jason blinks, closes his eyes, lets exhaustion and morphine carry him away.

\- - -

When Jason wakes up next, Matt is wearing a nurse's uniform and checking his blood pressure.

The peonies are in a vase next to his bed. Kurtis is asleep in a chair.

“You've been out for a while.” Matt smiles, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. Even here, among the strong antiseptic and ammonia odor of the hospital, his smoky smell is clear as day.

“Promise I'm not crazy?” Jason whispers, clenching his fists shut around nothing.

Matt opens his palm, a tiny heart shaped chocolate sits in it. “Promise.” And then he's gone.

The chocolate tastes like tears.

\- - -

“Jason, you have a visitor.” Kurtis shakes him awake.

It's Matt, dressed in his black jeans and combat boots from Europe.

“He says he met you in Europe, in Amsterdam?” Kurtis whispers into Jason's ear. “He's cute, Jase. I'll give you two some privacy.”

“Who are you?” Jason demands as soon as Kurtis is out of earshot. “ _What_ are you?”

“Anything, everything, nothing.” Matt twirls a dying peony between his fingers.

“What the hell kind of answer is that?” Jason huffs, furrowing his brow together.

“The only kind I'm afraid.”

And as soon as he appeared, he's gone.

\- - -

“The state opened an official criminal investigation on Mark. He broke your wrist and three of your ribs. You're lucky he didn't kill you,” Kurtis informs Jason the next time he's awake. “He's going to get time for what he did to you, serious time. If we can prove that it was continuous abuse, of course.”

Abuse. What a funny word.

“It makes it sound like I couldn't have left if I wanted to,” Jason laughs bitterly. “Like I couldn't have just stayed in Europe and never come back.”

“That's the thing honey. It's the abuse that makes you think you deserve to come back.”

Jason ignores the comment and flicks on the news.

“You need to testify,” Kurtis says, tone urgent. Jason just flicks the volume up louder.

Matt is there, the weatherman for today. Jason honestly isn't even surprised anymore. He's wearing a nerdy tie with cumulus clouds all over it.

“You need to testify. No one else can. No one else lived through that hell,” Kurtis repeats. Jason just stares into Matt's low-lidded eyes.

“This storm, too,” Matt says sincerely to the camera, “will pass.”

Jason smiles, a tiny, private smile.

Kurtis talks some more about the trial, and Jason's responsibility to his own well-being and Jason nods and smiles and pretends like he's not thinking about holding Matt's hand on an airplane to Paris.

\- - -

Jason is discharged from the hospital three days later.

Kurtis drives Jason to his house, shows him to the guest bedroom, helps him lie down on the bed.

“You need to really think about testifying,” Kurtis says, hand on his hip. “Give that bastard what he deserves.”

\- - -

Matt is sitting on the edge of the bed when Jason opens his eyes and jumps, shrieking a little.

“Shh,” Matt whispers. “You'll wake chicken-boy.”

“Chicken-boy? How did you know about that?” Jason glares obstinately at Matt's bemused and knowing smirk.

Matt smiles, taking a puff of his cigarette. “By now you should know that I know a lot of things that I shouldn't. So, the trial?” He sobers up, tossing his cigarette up in the air and snapping his fingers, making it disappear into a glowing ember.

“Ugh,” Jason groans. “Not you too. Enough about the fucking trial.”

“What are you afraid of?” Matt's eyes are like quicksand, and Jason just wants to drown.

“Anything, everything, nothing,” Jason parrots stubbornly, chin punched out.

“Happiness,” Matt says as he floats over to the open window, “begins with not being afraid anymore.” He whistles, short and sharp, and turns into a tiny chickadee.

Jason watches with wide eyes as the bird flutters away with a ruffle of feathers and a beady-eyed wink.

\- - -

Kurtis brings him breakfest the next morning.

“You know Jase,” he starts calmly while he watches Jason listlessly poking at his scrambled eggs, “You have to do something about Mark. You're the only one who can.”

_You aren't crazy, you're perfect._

_Happiness begins with not being afraid anymore._

“Okay.” Jason mutters. “Okay, I'll do it.”

“Oh, Jason,” Kurtis smiles, tears in his eyes as he runs the pads of his fingers across Jason's cheekbones. “I'm so proud of you.”

\- - -

Jason testifies.

Mark gets twenty years with chance of parole.

It's not much, but it's a start.

\- - -

Jason insists on going to pick up the rest of his belongings alone.

Matt shows up anyways, rubbing himself against the sofa like a cat.

“It smells like anger in here,” Matt mutters, rubbing his back more furiously against the sofa.

“You want to smell like anger too?” Jason raises an eyebrow, watching the frantic ritual with an almost laugh cowering in the back of his throat.

“No,” Matt smiles triumphantly. “I want _it_ to smell like me.”

“And what,” Jason sighs, “Do you smell like?”

Matt takes a deep breath, considers. “Like wishes, I guess. Wishes and magic and recklessness.”

“So,” Jason says with a low laugh. “Are you an angel or a demon?”

Matt shrugs. “Both. Neither. Does it matter to you?”

Jason groans, shoving more useless garbage into his rucksack. “Yes. Fuck. What does anger smell like?”

Matt cocks his head, considering. “Like gasoline. Like gasoline and pickles and blood.”

“What does love smell like?”

“Fresh soil, pies and scotch tape.”

“Bitterness?”

“Oranges and salt and yeast.”

“Like yeast for making bread?”

“Yes, like yeast for making bread.”

“Matt,” Jason moves closer, winding his arms around Matt's shoulders.

Matt hums in response.

“What does hope smell like? Wait-!” Jason presses his nose into Matt's tattered jean jacket. “Hmm. . .” he says, considering. “Does hope smell like a forest fire, peonies and tears?”

Matt blinks once, twice.

A slow grin spreads over his face, dreamy and lovely.

“That,” he beams, “is exactly correct.”

And then he surges forward, pressing a kiss to Jason's startled lips.

“Here,” he whispers, pushing something cold and metal into Jason's palm. It's a lighter, Matt's favorite. “I don't usually do this sort of thing, you know.”

Jason smiles sadly, staring at Matt like he knows it will be the last time. He tosses the lighter from one hand to the other. “What, give away your prized lighter to a stranger you met in the park?”

“No,” Matt smiles. “Give myself to someone. It's me, Jason. Hope. It's me. I'm hope. Now it's you. You're hope.” He pauses, rushing forward for one last kiss. “Be happy, Jason. Be happy, and hopeful and reckless and stupid and loving and bitter and kind, but please, please whatever you do, don't forget me.”

And then he's gone, vanished into thin air.

Jason sinks to the floor and cries then; deep, throaty sobs that tear him to shreds. He's not alright, it will be quite some time before he's alright, but he will be alright eventually. After all, he has hope, and he has love and he's not afraid anymore.

And he knows that this storm too, will pass.

\- - -

“ _Happiness begins with not being afraid anymore.”_

_-The Book of Everything by Guus Kuijer_

_\- - -_

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it, the idea came to me roughly from a Freezepop song and an airplane trip and then grew and shifted into this lovely, angsty disaster.


End file.
